If you consider the SmartThings app (and all the other SmartApps within) confusing then this may be just what you’ve been looking for.

SmartRules is a 3rd party app from obycode that promises to make it easier to program powerful If While Then logic for your SmartThings system.

This weekends latest release (v1.4) includes first time support for UK SmartThings users too.

Setup

When you launch the app for the first time you connect it to your hub through the SmartThings Cloud.

Then you choose which devices you want to be controlled by SmartRules. It would be nice to have a ‘select all’ option here rather than have to tick each individual device, but the developers tell us Samsung do not allow this option.

If you subsequently add a new device to your system you have two options to included it. First, you can logout and go through the setup process again to add it (your existing Rules are all safely retained). Alternatively you can access the SmartRules SmartApp from the official SmartThings app on your device and add it there.

Security

SmartRules takes advantage of officially supported SmartTings APIs and we asked the developers to comment on the security aspects of the app…

SmartRules presents the authorization flow from SmartThings over HTTPS, where the user enters their username and password. This username and password are never seen or collected by SmartRules. During the authorization process, the user selects which devices SmartRules is allowed to access; devices not selected during this process are inaccessible by SmartRules. When the authorization process completes, SmartThings provides SmartRules a secure token to use for further communication which is saved securely in the iOS keychain. At anytime (for example, if a device with SmartRules installed is lost or stolen) a user can simply delete the SmartRules SmartApp and it will no longer have access to anything.

Building the Logic

Once setup is completed you can get straight into building your ‘Rules’ which is an incredibly simple process carried out with a few taps on your smartphone. Each rule consists of three parts.

Triggers –Choose how you want to launch your rule from a huge variety of options. The If can be a basic time event, motion detection, energy usage, luminance or nearly any state of or value from the devices on your SmartThings network.

Conditions – This part is optional but it’s where the power lies, only performing the action While certain conditions are true. You can for example turn a light on While it’s dark. If you decide to use multiple conditions (eg Motion Detected, Door is Open) you can select whether All or Any of these circumstances are required to be met before the action fires.

It’s worth noting that the ‘after sunset’ and ‘before sunrise’ conditions both basically mean ‘dark’ and there’s no need for the 2 conditions (after sunset, before sunrise) in your logic. There’s currently no way to add a plus or minus value to sunrise or sunset values (eg Turn outside lights on 30 mins before sunset), but this is on the developers to do list. Check out the current list of Triggers, Conditions and Actions at the bottom of this page. You assign each rule an icon and there’s one of the best choices of graphics I’ve seen here (almost 250) to represent tasks.

QuickTap

It’s not immediately obvious what the ‘QuickTap’ trigger is, but it’s a widget that adds a useful way of triggering your Rules from buttons on your Today Screen (the pull-down-from-the top quick access panel on your iPhone).

In addition SmartRules supports the Apple Watch giving you a way to trigger those same Rules that are on your Today Screen from your wrist.

You Rule

As well as their commitment to adding new Triggers, Conditions, Actions in the future, obycode tell us there are many UI improvements planned for the major v2.0 update that’s in the works.